Evening Concert 2B
This Evening Concert promises a special experience for both eyes and ears. At the center of this session is the saxophone, performed by one of the most distinguished artists of our time: Hamburg-based saxophonist Asya Fateyeva. Together with her talented students, she presents five works specially conceived for her and her instruments.
This instrumental focus is complemented by two striking video works, presented on the specially installed video wall in the FEH, which dissolve the boundaries between sonic and visual space.
Program Overview
Adaptive_Study#06 – Symbolic Structures Enhanced
Riccardo Dapelo
Expandiere
Ching Lam Chung
Silent “human bird language”
Yongbing Dai and Yiping Bai
Poetic Encounter with the digital shadow
Nicolas Kummert
Resonant Thresholds
Cecilia Suhr
Jamshid Jam
Jean-Francois and Charles Ramin Roshandel
About the pieces & the artists
Riccardo Dapelo : Adaptive_Study#06 – Symbolic Structures Enhanced
Adaptive_Study#06 – Symbolic Structures Enhanced (composed 2025), is the sixth work in a series of compositional studies initiated in 2015. Across the series, the research has addressed all parameters of the musical work, from its initial conceptual design to score realization, from performance instructions to the algorithmic and compositional conception of the live electronics. The present study continues this trajectory, focusing on the idea of a musical work whose temporal form is not fixed or closed in advance.
The primary artistic objective is to explore an adaptive musical form capable of responding to performer behavior while maintaining stylistic coherence. Rather than relying on predefined formal trajectories or stochastic indeterminacy, the piece investigates adaptive processes grounded in symbolic structures, memory, and performer–system interaction.
To this end, the work is conceived around several interrelated principles. The live electronics system continuously observes and analyses the performer’s actions, extracting symbolic information related to pitch, duration, density, and temporal grouping. These data are transcribed into fragments of symbolic notation, which are stored, transformed, and recontextualised during performance. In this way, the system simulates a form of temporal awareness, operating on a short-term memory of what has been played and produced up to the present moment.
A central concern of the piece is the control of musical density. Both at the micro structural and macrostructural levels, the system adapts its behaviour in response to changing performance conditions, modulating the accumulation, suspension, or release of events in order to avoid entropic saturation. The live electronics do not function as an autonomous generator, but rather as a responsive musical partner whose actions become perceptible over extended time spans.
The work is interactive in a dialogical sense: neither the performer’s actions nor the system’s responses are fully predetermined. Instead, musical form emerges from the ongoing negotiation between human and algorithmic agency. Symbolic structures serve as a shared medium through which this interaction unfolds, allowing the electronics to operate not only on sound, but on compositional representations. Given the complexity of these ambitions, the piece is explicitly conceived as a study. This format allows experimentation through hypotheses, testing, and retro-diction, acknowledging that artistic practice does not follow a strictly scientific method. As Paul Veyne observes, the artwork—however rigorously conceived—ultimately resists definitive classification, reflecting the variability and unpredictability inherent in human creative processes.
The piece is presented together with an accompanying paper that documents its conceptual and compositional development.
Live electronics setup is described in the score.
Live recording (earlier version): https://soundcloud.com/riccardodapelo/adaptive_study02
About the artist
Riccardo Dapelo (b. 1962) studied composition with G. Manzoni and A. Vidolin. His work focuses on acoustic and electronic composition, live electronics, and interactive systems, and has been performed internationally. He has published articles and lectured on voice analysis, spatialisation, philosophy of art, and musical time. He collaborates with visual artists on interactive works and sound installations for museum and exhibition spaces. He teaches Composition at the Conservatory of Piacenza.
Ching Lam Chung: Expandiere
This piece explores the different sound qualities of the baritone saxophone—from pitched materials to mechanical sounds—and its interaction with electronics, thereby investigating the sonic hybridity between the instrument and electronic media. Both tape and live electronics are used: the fixed electronics allow sound objects to be precisely organized within the spatial environment, while the live electronics serve as a bridge between the instrument and the fixed electronics, enhancing their connections.
Through this approach, the piece creates a unique sonic environment in which different sound objects interact and evolve with one another, offering the audience a varied auditory experience in which the instrument and electronics fully merge.
About the artist
CHUNG Ching Lam, Mavis (b. 05.06.2003), was born and raised in Hong Kong. Mavis currently studies Master music composition at Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts, under the guidance of Orm Finnendahl and Ulrich Alexander Kreppein.
Mavis’s music thoughtfully explores timbre, transforming ordinary sounds into unexpected auditory experiences. Her compositions discover the beauty of melancholy as she creates a unique sonic landscape that reflects her philosophy and experiences.
She received third prize in the 2nd NC Wong Young Composers Award and was chosen for the electroacoustic composition fellowship at the Delian Academy 2024. She also participated in the URTIcanti contemporary music festival and the Internationales Digitalkunst Festival. Furthermore, she attended the South China Contemporary Creative Music Institute and has been selected for the Mixed Media category at the iISUONO Contemporary Music Week 2025. Her compositions have been performed in Greece, Germany, and Italy.
She studies Bachelor music composition at Hong Kong Baptist University, under the guidance of Eugene Birman, Camilo Mendez, Stylianos Dimou and Ka Shu TAM.
Yongbing Dai and Yiping Bai: Silent “human bird language”
This work, composed for saxophone and electronic music, uses the saxophone’s unique multiphonic harmonics, distinctive timbre, and various techniques such as tonguing to evoke an effect of ancient human “bird language,” akin to “abstract writing” incomprehensible to modern humans. It uses this to question the constant self-destruction that occurs on our shared planet. We can consider this: we have entered the age of artificial intelligence, with highly advanced science and technology. Yet, even in this civilized context, for their own benefit, humans can disregard and kill their fellow human beings. This is utterly absurd and tragic. How is this different from the barbaric slaughter of ancient times? What is the significance of the development of human technology and civilization?
About the artists
Dai Yongbing holds a doctorate in Electronic Music Composition from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. He currently teaches electronic music at the Art and Technology Department of the Composition Department of Wuhan Conservatory of Music. He was sponsored to study composition and electronic music composition at the Royal Danish Academy of Music, where he received a master’s degree in composition. In 2023, he studied sound art at the University of Music and Drama in Munich, Germany.In 2024, he was sponsored by the European Union’s Erasmus program to study electronic music composition with Professor Karlheinz Essl at the University of Music and Drama in Vienna, Austria. The electronic music work “Two Trembling Hearts” won the first prize at the Hangzhou International Electronic Music Festival. In June 2022, he was selected for the academic class of computer music design and performance at the IRCAM-Manni-festival Music Festival at Pompidou in Paris, France. His work “Two Worlds of Monks” won the first prize in the UPI-Sketch professional group at the 2022 Xenakis (CIX) Music Center in France. His wind band work “Non-Taoism” was premiered by the Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra. His works have been performed all over the world, such as Munich and Düsseldorf in Germany, Amsterdam in the Netherlands, Vienna in Austria, Lisbon in Portugal, Copenhagen in Denmark, New York in the United States, Tokyo in Japan, Seoul in South Korea.
Nicolas Kummert: Poetic Encounter with the digital shadow
This proposal invites saxophonist Asya Fateyeva into an improvisatory performance that explores the encounter between acoustic virtuosity and real-time electronic transformation. The project centres on a live-electronics setup I have developed within artistic research contexts over several years—a system deliberately designed to be simple, flexible, affordable, and fast to deploy. It requires only a close microphone (ideally the Vigamusictools Intramic), a small audio interface, a laptop, and three compact controllers. Its purpose is not to impose effects but to extend the sonic and expressive possibilities of the acoustic instrument while remaining transparent and highly responsive.
The concept is straightforward: the saxophone produces the primary musical material, and I modulate that sound live through controlled timbral, spectral, and temporal transformations. The electronics behave as a reactive partner—what I call the performer’s digital shadow: a sonic counterpart that follows, shapes, questions, or briefly detaches from the acoustic gesture. The identity of the acoustic sound remains fully audible, while the electronic layer opens new directions within the improvisation.
The artistic foundations of this work draw on several research frameworks:
• Improvisation as assemblage (after Deleuze): the performance is approached as a self-emergent system in which performers, instruments, digital processes, acoustics, and feedback relations act together to shape the form in real time.
• Paulo de Assis’s Logic of Experimentation: the focus lies on what the instrument–electronics constellation can do when activated through exploratory performance, rather than on pre-defined material.
• Georgina Born’s theory of musical mediation: the setup foregrounds the interplay between acoustic sound, digital transformation, performer interaction, and audience perception.
• Laurent Cugny’s audiotactile perspective: the electronic layer functions as an extension of touch, gesture, and micro-timing rather than an external effect. The project treats improvisation as a co-embodied process that produces a hybrid sonic entity.
Musically, the performance is structured as a series of improvisatory episodes that examine different modes of relationship between acoustic and transformed sound:
– subtle extensions of timbre and resonance;
– interactive textures and rhythmical counterpoints between acoustic phrasing and electronic responses
– sections where Asya’s sound is heavily transformed in real time, while the unprocessed acoustic sound is replayed in the pauses of her playing, blurring the audience’s visual-aural connection, and questioning the musician’s immediate relationship to her own instrument.
Because the system is lightweight and adaptable, the collaboration requires limited rehearsal and can be shaped around Asya’s musical language and preferred improvisational strategies. The format proposes an accessible but conceptually rigorous exploration of improvisation, mediation, and electronic augmentation. It offers the conference audience an accessible example of how simple, flexible computer-music tools can generate rich musical dialogues and expand the expressive ecology of the acoustic instrument, shedding new light on various aspects of improvisation.
I propose to conclude the performance with a short discussion in which Asya can reflect on how the electronic shadow influenced musical decision-making, interaction, and perception—offering insight into the core research questions driving this work.
About the artist
Nicolas Kummert (1979) is a Belgian saxophonist, electronic artist, composer and researcher known for his melodic sense, openness and exploratory approach. He has recorded over 70 albums and performed worldwide with artists such as Lionel Loueke, Jeff Ballard, DRIFTER and many others. Active in hybrid acoustic–electronic projects, film and dance music, and interdisciplinary research, he develops innovative modulation processes and collaborates across jazz, poetry, contemporary dance and African music.
Joe Wright: Cor Ddiglwed (Unhearing Chorus)
Cor Ddiglwed (unhearing chorus) takes inspiration from Daphne Oram’s ‘Bird of Parallax’, and was developed with the one-of-a-kind, Mini Oramics, developed by Tom Richards based on Oram’s designs for a revised version of her pioneering graphical synthesis machine.
In the piece, the author phrases/samples recorded with Oramics, alongside field recordings taken locally to his home in South Wales and live processed saxophone which uses the instrument as input to a phase vocoder designed to mimic the writing / replaying / overwriting process that Mini Oramics facilitates.
The piece was written in the context of a highly divisive by-election in which local communities in South Wales saw a hot rise in populist sentiment, and a rise in polarised rhetoric on and offline. While the technical inception of the piece draws heavily on Oram and the legacy of her synthesiser design, the field recording process at this time highlighted the importance shapes and forms in captured human and animal voices – seen through an Oramics lens. The piece explores the idea of diverse clashing narrative threads in a fight for attention – as a metaphorical mirror to the author’s recordings of local dawn choruses. Both in the piece and the context of its composition, these voices are, despite their differences, interconnected by common challenges and under-explored common ground, yet are broadly unheard by others.
The piece forms part of a broader body of recent work that explores Oramics in the context of Oram and Iannis Xenakis’ work, and the ways that their thinking and legacy can apply to contemporary musical composition, instrument design, and accessible musical tools and resources.
About the artist
Joe Wright is a musician and maker based in Cardiff, with an interest in collaborative music making, field recording, accessible music technology/practice, and creative code. As a saxophonist, Joe is currently playing across the UK and Europe with jazz/contemporary music groups led by Rob Luft, Corrie Dick, and in FORJ. He also has a long-standing collaboration – Onin – with experimental musician, James L Malone that explores unstable systems and atypical interactions. Recently, Joe has been exploring field recording with a focus on his local natural spaces in South Wales.
Cecilia Suhr: Resonant Thresholds
Resonant Thresholds explores the liminal space between human expression and technologically mediated sound. Structured around a fixed audio score, the work unfolds as a slowly transforming audiovisual environment in which live violin performance interacts with real-time electronic processing. Noise, resonance, and breath-like textures blur distinctions between acoustic intimacy and digital vastness, allowing the materiality of sound to become porous and unstable. Through structured live comprovisation (composed improvisation), the performer actively shapes the unfolding sonic landscape, while the processed audio simultaneously generates an evolving visual score that functions as a symbolic translation of sound. The work invites listeners to inhabit a threshold between perception and imagination, where meaning emerges through the continuous negotiation between composed structure, live performance, and technological extension.
About the artist
Cecilia Suhr is an award-winning intermedia artist, multimedia composer, researcher, author, and multi-instrumentalist (violin, cello, voice, piano, bamboo flute). Her honors include the Pauline Oliveros Award (IAWM), a MacArthur Foundation DML Grant, the American Prize (Honorable Mention), Global Music Awards, Best of Competition from BEA, among other distinctions. Her work has been presented at ICMC, SEAMUS, NYCEMF, EMM, SCI, ACMC, Mise-En, MoXsonic, and many more. She is a Full Professor at Miami University Regionals.
Jean-Francois Charles and Ramin Roshandel: Jamshid Jam
The sonic dust of a country that has been burned to the ground several times over the centuries and yet has formed some of the most elaborate and highly sophisticated musical structures to have ever existed. According to Persian myths, Jamshid, who ruled during several centuries, was responsible for inventions ranging from the manufacturing of weapons to the mining of jewels to the making of wine. He is also credited with the discovery of music. This is what brought the Jamshid Jam duet together: the search for music at the crossroads of the Radif tradition (Persian classical music) and the development of musical instruments such as the turntable and live electronics.
About the artists
Ramin Roshandel grew up in a family surrounded by artists; his luthier dad, his painter uncle, and his setar instructor Farshid Jam had strong influences on him as a teenager. Ramin worked with the renowned Mohammad Reza Lotfi at Maktab-Khāne-ye Mirzā Abdollāh and won second place in the 7th National Youth Music Festival in Tehran, Iran. As a composer, Ramin Roshandel works with improvisatory structures to contrast or converge with non-tonal forms.
Jean-François Charles is Associate Professor of Composition and Digital Media at the University of Iowa. He creates at the crossroads of music and technology. As a clarinetist, he has performed improvised music with artists ranging from Douglas Ewart to Gozo Yoshimasu. He worked with Karlheinz Stockhausen for the world premiere of Rechter Augenbrauentanz.
Ramin Roshandel & Jean-François Charles have worked on several projects together. Roshandel was the setār soloist for the premiere performances of Charles’ opera Grant Wood in Paris in 2019. They performed together as part of the live soundtrack composed by Charles and Nicolas Sidoroff to the 1923 Hunchback of Notre-Dame movie, a commission by FilmScene with premiere performances in November 2023 in Iowa. In 2025, they composed and performed a series of 13 concerts with the Red Cedar Chamber Music ensemble.